Zulip - Powerful open source group chat

[A Former User]

@ruihildt
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16863675

[A Former User]

" Zulip is 100% open source software, built by a vibrant community of hundreds of developers from all around the world. With 120,000 words of developer documentation, a high quality code base, and a welcoming community, it’s easy to extend or tweak Zulip.

Zulip has a significantly larger and more active development community than other modern open source group chat solutions like Mattermost, Rocket.Chat, and matrix.org."
https://zulipchat.com/

Interesting integrations:-
https://zulipchat.com/integrations/

Positive reviews at:-
Zulip Reviews
https://alternativeto.net/software/zulip-chat-server/reviews/

[ruihildt]

https://www.reddit.com/user/tabbott

"Note that Zulip was never developed by Dropbox; they just bought the company and then generously donated the software to the open source community. It is developed primarily by Kandra Labs, an independent company, and our amazing community."

[jdaviescoates]

@heliostatic said in Zulip - Powerful open source group chat:

This would be great as a more complete alternative to RocketChat.

I'm loving RocketChat and so I'd love to know more about how Zulip is more complete from your perspective?

@ruihildt said in Zulip - Powerful open source group chat:

I'm very much interested, as Rocket Chat and Mattermost lack proper threading.

I'm intrigued, given RocketChat and Mattermost both do threads, are you able to elaborate on what makes Zulips threading "proper"?

Thanks!

[ruihildt]

@jdaviescoates Keep in mind that this was posted 2 years ago.^^

Zulip has a threading concept which is different (and more similar to replies in email), I would suggest to check their demo or website to see how that works.
It's less straightforward than threading in slack/mattermost/rocketchat, but once integrated, it's much better for having sub-discussions.

[jdaviescoates]

@ruihildt ah OK, thanks. Yeah, I think perhaps RocketChat at least didn't do threads at all two years OK! I'll try to play more with Zulip... although I'd have to play more with RocketChat and Mattermost too to compare as I've not really used any of them that much yet! (nor slack fwiw)

[robi]

https://github.com/zulip/docker-zulip

[A Former User]

I would love to see Zulip in here. Imo we need more chat options I think and Zulip is an impressive Slack alternative

[marcusquinn]

So-far on Cloudron I'm finding Mattermost the best of the bunch as a Discord/Slack alternative, and Rocket.Chat a decent tool for website livechat. Element I'm finding a bit too quirky but keeping an open mind.

Although, happy to give Zulip a try, would depend on being Slack API compatible to be a real contender IHMO.

[A Former User]

@marcusquinn Yeah I find the experience with element a bit... odd. UI stutters often. Issues joining rooms causing me to re-start the app

[robi]

@marcusquinn Mattermost feels closest to Slack, but it has huge security issues in a open/public/untrusted setting.

For example, anyone can remove & modify channels they're in and thoroughly mess with the intent and integrity of the setup. Only through obscurity do most people not find this.

[A Former User]

@robi Yes, mattermost is more useful for private groups or teams.

[marcusquinn]

"One of the many benefits of using @zulip

Not having to wake up to your work collaboration tool being owned by Salesforce [dot] com inc

#opensource Raising hands"

https://twitter.com/mojeek/status/1333542034846740480?s=20

[seeker]

Interesting... Labeling substreams with topics seems interesting to me. Tags can get confusing. Having used email, I think people would be able to use topics as they are closer to email subject headings.

A couple of videos about Zulip:

Introduction from a teacher using it with students

CEO of Zulip – Tim Abbott (INTERVIEWED)

[robi]

And it has a dark mode!

[marcusquinn]

My brief assessment:

• Zulip looks like a more polished UI & Mobile than Mattermost & Element.
• Zulip threads aren't that clever, you can recreate that with sub-channels in any other chat platform, eg:
  • #accounts
  • #accounts-receivable
  • #accounts-payable
  • #accounts-etc
• Zulip doesn't offer the Omnichannel features Rocket.chat is strongest at.
• Zulip doesn't have as many integrations as Mattermost.

So, for me, the main reasons for this would be a better Desktop & Mobile UX for private and remote groups.

I don't see it as better than Slack or Discord, other than being FOSS.

I don't see it as better than Rocket.chat, that already has a strong UX on all platforms and Omnichannel.

So, nice option to have, proof is in the daily usage but, like most, I won't get to test much more than that unless it's packaged and in the App Store, so that's one for those choosing what's the best bang for their time on that.

[avatar1024]

@marcusquinn said in Zulip - Powerful open source group chat:

Zulip threads aren't that clever, you can recreate that with sub-channels in any other chat platform,

Except that you cannot create sub-channels in Rocket.chat. You could see "Discussions" as sub-channels but they're not in terms of ux, there is no hierarchy displayed. Plus the idea is that Zulip forces to sort each message someone within a topic or as a new topic (like on email) which greatly helps with keeping the whole instance organised.
Channels in Zulip are more like placeholders within which you have topics and not somewhere you type messages, which is a level hierarchy to organise discussion that rocket.chat does not have (you could say that "Teams" in Mattermost are kinda similar in that respect - though the intended purpose is different).

[marcusquinn]

@avatar1024 My suggestion is that you can create sub-channels by naming convention. I already do this with a 100+ channel Discord server I manage, and it works very well with 50+ team members.

I know some people that like threads in Slack, personally I don't, and find it another data-dimension that gets used inconsistently in practice.

Yeah, I like the Teams concept in Mattermost, shame their mobile apps are single-server and somewhat clumsy to finger.

TBH, the most valuable concept I've found in any chat app is the Role-based user permissions in Discord, that make scaling so much easier and faster than individual permissions management.

I get Zulip's sales pitch, I just don't think it's the only way to solve organisation, and I find the variability or user-designed structures can become worse than admin-designed, just the same as forums, where there can be multi-threads and repeat threads if the user doesn't have a priority for organisation.

Either way, be nice to see Zulip on Cloudron, it has my upvote and I'll give it a deeper look if it makes the grade. In the meantime, there's some ideas for organisation with other chat apps for organisation that might help with some of the message burying probs they claim to have the only solution to.

[robi]

I used to use RC and met their executive team, but grew to dislike it's setup rigidity and lack of dark mode.

It's nice to see all the improvements, and new omni-marketing, but that just seems like a webhook away from any chat app.

Zulip has an abstraction layer similar to GMail, which is much more flexible, but actually reminds me of Google>Apache Wave (now defunct).

I just don't like the mobile notifications being held hostage.

The decentralized Kune had nice innovations, but seems to be unmaintained for the last 3 years.

Rizzoma is in a similar state.

Okuna looks promising though. (beta)

[becaf]

One good thing to note about Zulip over Rocket.Chat is that Rocket has a 10,000 push notification limit... If you have 10 users sending 50 messages over one month, you're already over the limit!

There are some github support packages you can pay for ($5/$10) to increase your push notifications to 15k or 20k, but after that you have to pay. In this day and age. Push notifications are a must!

I understand they get millions so need to pay, but not being able to buy more than 20k makes this a bit problem as switching to Rocket cloud is very expensive

I'd love to see Zulip on here and even though it's not as easy to use, I've tried Mattermost, Rocket and Matrix/ Element and so far the other issues include; Mattermost CE has no user role/ permission management and Matrix is encrypted (albeit optionally) which I don't want for internal comms as we need to be able to audit it (like you would company emails).

Zulip is ideal, but I would love to see it on Cloudron so it can be managed with other Cloudron apps.

At the moment I have two Zulip setups and two devices with accounts on each, neither of which are getting push notifications (yes I've set it up properly). So once that is solved having Zulip on Cloudron would make life much easier.